jsackmann – Page 6 – Heavy Topspin

Epilogue: December 1873

*Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert with their 1974 Wimbledon trophies*

There was no single moment when the 1973 season officially ended and 1974 began. The tennis calendar was more of a perpetual cycle than a series of set campaigns. By the time Australia defeated the United States to reclaim the Davis Cup, preliminary ties in the 1974 competition were already in the books. When Ilie Năstase put the icing on his Grand Prix season with a victory at the elite Masters tournament, Australian Open warmups were in progress Down Under.

After the Australian Open, most of the world’s top players would head to North America, where the competing circuits had, for the most part, set aside their differences. Men would play World Championship Tennis and women would compete on the Virginia Slims tour. Unlike in 1973, Chris Evert would test her mettle against Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, and the rest of the gang, and not just at the majors.

In the ongoing battle between tradition and made-for-television modernity, both sides tended to focus on money. Everyone’s bank balance looked better when the circuit headed for the biggest markets in the richest countries, especially if a TV network was interested in the rights. As the amateur ethic drifted further into the past, tournaments were less likely to be hosted at venerable clubs, more likely to be wedged into the calendar at arenas with artificial surfaces laid down a few days before the talent arrived. The traditionalists had fought for decades to preserve the old ways; now, their defeat was total.

One of the casualties was mixed doubles. What used to be a weekly feature was increasingly a novelty in a world where the tours rarely intersected. For 1963, my records include mixed doubles events at 215 tournaments around the world. A decade later, the number was down to 23, many of which were amateur events far off the beaten track of the major circuits.

The Riggs-King Battle of the Sexes symbolized a lot of things, perhaps none more than this: The genders now played against each other, not side by side.

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That was not what Major Walter Clopton Wingfield had in mind.

In December 1973, the sport marked one hundred years since Major Wingfield first tried out “Sphairistiké,” the game he invented that would become known as lawn tennis. In 1873, Britain’s upper classes were mad for sports and games. Wingfield aimed to create a game that men and women could play together, more active than croquet and less vulnerable to a windy day than the newly faddish badminton.

As lawn tennis spread across the globe, many of Wingfield’s innovations, like his hourglass-shaped court, were set aside. But the notion of a mildly strenuous activity that mixed the genders was one of the keys to its success. Matches could be arranged in any conceivable permutation–Wingfield even imagined teams of three or four players on each side of the court–and competitors soon worked out ways to even the odds. Eighty-plus years before Riggs-King, early champions such as Blanche Bingley Hillyard and Lottie Dod competed against men, starting each game with a two- or three-point advantage.

Tournaments, back then, were social events, for players as much as for spectators. While mixed doubles was treated as a light-hearted pursuit compared to the more serious singles and men’s doubles, the most accomplished men and women usually took part. Fans loved it. It sometimes figured in courtships, as well: Even in the 1970s, the number of couples in the tennis world was a reminder of the amateur-era joint tournaments of the decade before. John Newcombe, Roy Emerson, and Cliff Drysdale all married veterans of the circuit. (It was also a small world: Emerson’s sister married Davis Cupper Mal Anderson, and Drysdale’s brother-in-law was doubles specialist and memoirist Gordon Forbes.) Even as opportunities dried up, the genders continued to mix: Stan Smith would soon wed Princeton standout Marjorie Gengler, and tabloid favorites Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors planned nuptials as well.

The new economics of tennis didn’t support old-school garden parties, and players of both genders eagerly made the sacrifice to chase after record prize money. Still, the public wanted mixed doubles, and promoters tried to give it to them.

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A few days after Connors and Evonne Goolagong clinched titles at the 1974 Australian Open, a brand-new tennis concept appeared on North American televisions. Spalding sponsored the International Mixed Doubles Championship, an eight-team event with a prize pool of $60,000. The winning team would take home $20,000: ten grand apiece.

“Heterosexual tennis has come out of the closet,” cracked Bud Collins.

The event was a success, pleasing both players and fans at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas, Texas. King and her usual mixed partner, Owen Davidson, took first place with a best-of-five-set victory over Casals and Marty Riessen. Simply reaching the final was an achievement: Other names in the field included Rod Laver, Nancy Richey, and doubles whiz Françoise Dürr.

(Laver wasn’t known as a mixed expert, but between 1959 and 1962, he won three majors and another six titles with Darlene Hard. Her first words to the untested youngster: “I’ll serve first and take the overheads.”)

“I loved to play mixed,” King said. “The millions of ordinary players, the hackers, can relate with mixed–or any kind of doubles–because that’s mainly what they play. Often mixed is a lot more interesting and exciting for spectators than singles. The ball’s in action more. The attendance at this tournament, and the TV prove there’s a market for mixed.”

It wasn’t just Spalding that was willing to make that bet. World Team Tennis, slated to begin play in May 1974, was built on the same premise. Each squad would feature both men and women, and doubles matches–included mixed–would have as much weight as one-on-one competition. When the Minnesota Buckskins faced the Philadelphia Freedoms, Davidson, player-coach for Minnesota, would find himself in an unfamiliar and unenviable position: across the net from Freedoms star Billie Jean.

Major Wingfield would barely have known his own invention in the tennis world of 1974. The courts had straightened out, the nets had come down, and rackets had evolved beyond recognition. The sport featured millionaire players, tournaments on six continents, and a 55-year-old man who walked like a duck but had somehow captivated a nation. Still, Wingfield would have picked out glimmers of what made lawn tennis a 19th-century sensation: Men and women playing alongside one another, joking, bickering, and–every once in a while–falling in love.

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This post concludes my 128-part series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Read the whole thing by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows the full Table of Contents.

In 2024, I’ll be writing regularly about analytics and contemporary tennis, with some history thrown in. Subscribe to receive each new post by email:

December 15, 1973: Court Adjourned

Clearly something wasn’t quite right. Margaret Court was the most overwhelming force in women’s tennis since Maureen Connolly. She had won over 100 matches in 1973, and all four of her losses went three sets. At the 1973 Western Australian Championships in Perth, she was going for her 12th career title at the event.

On December 15th, she met countrywoman Kerry Harris in the semi-final. Harris, like everyone else, hadn’t had much luck against Court, taking only one set in nine previous meetings. She had little reason to hope for more this time: She had arrived in Perth on a four-match losing streak. Court, for her part, had won her first three matches at the tournament with the loss of only five total games.

The first sign that this would end differently came in the third game, when Harris broke for a 2-1 advantage. Court responded in kind but didn’t make any further progress. Only when the first set reached 5-5 did someone crack, and to the astonishment of the Perth crowd, it was the 11-time champion. Harris took the last two games for the set. The second set followed a similar script: Eight holds of serve, then another Harris breakthrough to seal the unlikely result, 7-5, 6-4.

The full story emerged the following week. Margaret Court, already the mother of a 21-month-old son, was pregnant. Her second child was due in July, and she would step away from the tour immediately. It was a blow to the Bonne Bell Cup–a fledgling international women’s competition between Australia and the United States, to be held later in December–as well as to the Australian Open itself.

Court’s absence, of course, was an opportunity for the players she had shut out for so long. Evonne Goolagong not only grabbed the Western Australian title; she also saw her chances of victory skyrocket at the big event in Melbourne. Another beneficiary, in the slightly longer term, was Billie Jean King. King skipped the Australian swing, having made enormous financial demands of the Bonne Bell Cup that organizers ultimately weren’t able to meet. But while Madame Superstar had recently talked about focusing on other parts of her life, she would return, revitalized and ferociously motivated, to the Virginia Slims tour in January. With Court out of the way, King would be the dominant player on the 1974 indoor circuit.

While Billie Jean would keep the youngsters in check for another year, Court’s exit marked the beginning of the end of an era. Margaret would return in November 1974 only to lose an Australian Open quarter-final to Martina Navratilova. (She did, however, pick up that 12th career title in Perth.) She never made another major final, and further pregnancies soon led her into a more permanent retirement. King would last longer–she won tournaments and made the Wimbledon semis as late as 1983–but after 1974, she, too, was essentially a part-timer, putting World Team Tennis and myriad other pursuits ahead of the traditional tour. The field was open for Navratilova and Chris Evert to forge new dynasties.

Court’s pregnancy closed another door, as well: Bobby Riggs’s lingering hope of a rematch. The first Battle of the Sexes, back in May, had been the one blotch on the Australian’s remarkable season, and Riggs saw dollar signs in an encore. Billie Jean had refused him, and negotiations with the Goolagong and Evert camps went nowhere. With Court unavailable, Riggs, too, faded into the history books.

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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

Predicting Next Year’s Elo Ratings

I often illustrate the difference between Elo ratings and the traditional ATP and WTA ranking-point systems as follows: The official rankings tell you how good a player was six months ago. Elo estimates where they are today. For the purposes of tournament entry and so on, a 52-week average makes sense. But if you’re predicting the outcome of tomorrow’s match, you don’t want to assign the same weight to a year-old result that you give to yesterday’s news.

That said, Elo ratings are not explicitly predictive. They rely only on past results. They don’t recognize the fact that a player on a hot streak will probably cool off, or that a younger player is more likely to improve than an older one. If we want to look further ahead than tomorrow’s match, we need to take some of those additional factors into account.

Hence today’s project: Projecting Elo ratings one year in advance. Elo ratings tend to be a leading indicator of official rankings, so if we can get some idea of a player’s future in Elo terms, we can estimate–very approximately, I admit–his or her ATP or WTA ranking even further out.

I kept things simple. Each player’s forecast is based on four variables: Age, current Elo rating, rating one year ago, and rating two years ago. Current rating is by far the most important consideration. It accounts for over 70% of the men’s forecast and 80% of the women’s. Everything else is essentially a tweak. The two older ratings allow the forecast to make adjustments if the current rating is an outlier. By including player age, we account for the fact that players over 25 or 26 start–on average!–to decline, and the older they are, the sharper the decline.

Take Novak Djokovic as an example. His current Elo rating is 2,227, one year ago it was 2,145, and two years ago it was 2,186. Because his 2023 year-end rating was higher than 2021 or 2022, we’d expect a small step backwards. And because he’s 36 years old, the laws of physics might eventually slow him down. Put it all together, and the model projects his 2024 year-end Elo at 2,116. Excellent, but slightly more human, and a number that would’ve placed him third on this year’s list.

Here is what the model predicts as the 2024 year-end top ten:

Rank  Player              2024 Elo  2023 Rank  2023 Elo  
1     Jannik Sinner           2144          2      2197  
2     Carlos Alcaraz          2137          3      2149  
3     Novak Djokovic          2116          1      2227  
4     Daniil Medvedev         2059          4      2104  
5     Alexander Zverev        2021          5      2024  
6     Andrey Rublev           1988          6      2020  
7     Stefanos Tsitsipas      1969          9      1974  
8     Holger Rune             1954         12      1936  
9     Hubert Hurkacz          1950          8      1983  
10    Grigor Dimitrov         1928          7      2011

As precise as that table looks, it is hard to predict the future. Here are the same ten players, with a 95% prediction interval shown:

The intervals demonstrate just how uncertain we are, with 12 months of tennis to play. If Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz hits the high end of his range, in the mid-2,300s, he’ll have established himself as a runaway number one. But if they surprise in the other direction, they’ll land below 2,000 and just barely stay in the top ten. Even these intervals don’t quite account for all the unknowns. There’s a nonzero chance that any of these guys will get hurt and miss most of the season, leaving them off the 2024 year-end list entirely.

I suspect, also, that a more sophisticated model would give a different range of outcomes for Djokovic. There are few precedents for his level of play at age 36, and he outperformed expectations in 2023. Had we run this model a year ago, it would’ve predicted a 2,071 Elo for him now. He beat that by more than 150 points, landing around the 85th percentile of the projection. But time is cruel. Since 1980, five out of six 36-year-olds have seen their Elo decline from the previous season. The average year-over-year change–including those few players who gained–is a loss of 45 points. It’s hard to bet against Djokovic, but at this point in his career, his downside almost certainly exceeds his upside.

Finally, let’s take a look at the projected 2024 top ten on the women’s side. It’s not nearly as juicy as the men’s forecast, as it barely differs from the 2023 list. As I mentioned above, a player’s current rating is a bigger factor in the forecast than it is for men–age is less of a factor, and if a player’s rating jumps around from year to year, women are more likely to stay at their current level than bounce back to a previous one. The forecast:

Rank  Player               2024 Elo  2023 Rank  2023 Elo  
1     Iga Swiatek              2197          1      2237  
2     Cori Gauff               2100          2      2127  
3     Aryna Sabalenka          2062          3      2099  
4     Jessica Pegula           2035          4      2089  
5     Elena Rybakina           2024          5      2059  
6     Marketa Vondrousova      1977          8      2005  
7     Ons Jabeur               1976          7      2007  
8     Karolina Muchova         1965          6      2014  
9     Qinwen Zheng             1961          9      2000  
10    Liudmila Samsonova       1938         11      1959

You might have noticed in both the ATP and WTA lists that most ratings–at least for top-tenners–are projected to go down. There’s a small regression component in the model, meaning that every player is expected to pull a bit back toward the middle of the pack. That doesn’t mean they will, of course, but on average, that’s what happens.

Here are the prediction intervals for the women’s top ten:

The magnitude of the intervals is about the same as it was for the men. Iga Swiatek could launch into a peak-Serena-like stratosphere, or she could, conceivably, land at the fringes of the top ten. Liudmila Samsonova, bringing up the end of this list, might challenge for a place in the top three, or she could be scrambling to stay in the top 50.

One thing is certain: The 2024 year-end lists won’t actually look like this. The value of this sort of forecast, even when it is so approximate, lies in the context it gives us. A year from now, we’ll be talking about which players outperformed or underperformed their expectations. Projections like these help us pin down what, exactly, was a reasonable expectation in the first place.

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Iga Swiatek and the Updated Tennis 128

My Tennis 128 list was largely finalized before the start of the 2022 season. I made a few adjustments as the year went along, notably bumping up Ashleigh Barty several places after her Australian Open title. Since then, though, there has been little reason to update the list. While many all-time greats are still playing, most of them–with one major exception!–are no longer at the top of the game. The young stars taking their place are still building their résumés.

The method I used to construct the ranking used each player’s peak performance, their top five years, and their overall career, all measured by Elo. It is possible for a youngster to crack the list with an extremely high peak, but because two of the three components of the algorithm rely more on longevity, it’s not easy. The formula was designed to compare entire bodies of work, so placing a mid-career Iga Swiatek or Carlos Alcaraz (or Naomi Osaka or Daniil Medvedev) was not the point. All we can do is see how a player like that would rate if their career ended today.

Swiatek, with her fourth major and her best year-end Elo rating, makes the cut. Despite a career that spans only a few seasons, Iga slots into the list just ahead of Barty, right behind Dorothy Round, at 101st overall.

Thus, the Tennis 128 grows to 129. (I’m not about to say goodbye to the great Beverly Baker Fleitz.) And for now, that’s as much as the list will expand. No other newcomers quite qualify.

On the women’s side, Aryna Sabalenka ranks about 200th, and Coco Gauff stands around #250. Two returning WTAers are also worth keeping an eye on this year. Angelique Kerber comes in around 160th, and Osaka ranks in the neighborhood of #180. It’s unlikely that any of these players will crack the 128 by the end of 2024, but especially if Gauff or Sabalenka turns in a particularly dominant season, it is possible.

The player with the best shot at becoming a 128er next year might surprise you. Alexander Zverev didn’t miss the cut by much when I first made the list, and while he hasn’t improved his position much in the meantime, he continues to inch toward inclusion. He stands at the edge of the top 140, and a single strong season could force me to make room. About 15 places behind him, in the mid-150s, is Medvedev.

The ATP’s prize youngsters, Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, both remain outside the top 200. Again, this is more a matter of their short careers than any knock on their performance thus far. Alcaraz is around 205th, while Sinner ranks another 20 places down the list. Like Sabalenka and Gauff, they’ll probably need multiple seasons to reach the Tennis 128 threshold.

For some of you, I know, the real action is at the top of the table, not the fringes. A handful of high-profile retirements and injuries meant that 2022/23 turned out to be a great time to make an all-time ranking that would remain valid for several more years. The one fly in the ointment, of course, is Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic ranked fourth (behind Rod Laver, Steffi Graf, and Martina Navratilova), and at this point in his illustrious career, there’s only so much he can do to climb higher. Today’s game is a bit weaker than it was at his peak, and Novak probably is, too: His Elo rating stands at 2,227, compared to 2,435 at the end of the 2015 season. The most substantial difference between him and Laver is peak rating: Rocket rates better than anyone else by a wide margin.

Still, Djokovic’s persistence at the top of the game alters the calculation. When I first built the ranking two years ago, his career–that is, the part of my formula apart from peak rating and best five years–ranked fourth behind Roger Federer, Bill Tilden, and Ken Rosewall. Now he’s up to second place, so close to Fed that a mere top-ten finish in 2024 would move him to the top of this category, too.

What it all adds up to is this: Move over, Martina. Djokovic is the new number three. Another season like this one, and he’ll displace Steffi, as well. The gap in peak ratings makes it unlikely he’ll ever catch Laver, but don’t tell Novak, or else he might figure out how to reach the top of this list, too.

Click here for the full Tennis 128, with links to long-form essays about each player.

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December 11, 1973: Triangulation

Ken Rosewall was the odd man out when Australia triumphed in the 1973 Davis Cup final, but less than two weeks later, he was in the news as a sought-after star. On December 11th, the 39-year-old signed on as the player-coach of the Pittsburgh Triangles. He would team with Evonne Goolagong, Vitas Gerulaitis, and others when the World Team Tennis campaign began in May.

Rosewall’s signing was a much-needed shot in the arm for the upstart league. It had held a player draft in August, making a splash with the early signings of Billie Jean King and John Newcombe. Since then, contract announcements had been sparse, especially among men. The Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s union, was skeptical of the concept; leading figures Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe were particularly firm against it. Until the ATP made an official decision, men who joined a Team Tennis squad risked suspension from the main tour.

That was just the start. The International Lawn Tennis Federation continued to deny their sanction to the league, seeing the May-to-August schedule of stateside dates as an existential threat to the traditional European summer calendar of the French Open, Italian Open, and so much more. WTT bigwigs had made it clear that it wouldn’t stand in the way of Wimbledon, but given the proposed league schedule, other conflicts were inevitable.

Enough player signings, though, and the governing bodies would be irrelevant. Limited as it was, the men’s roster already included Rosewall, Newcombe, and Jimmy Connors. By the end of the month, Ilie Năstase would also be flirting with the league. Drafted by San Diego, he made news when he demanded a trade to New York, saying it was the only place he would play–if he decided to play at all. WTT had no problem lining up top women: In addition to King and Goolagong, Margaret Court had reached an agreement with the San Francisco Golden Gaters, even if she had yet to put pen to paper.

If organized tennis had learned one thing since the beginning of the Open era in 1968, it was that money would win in the end. The details of Rosewall’s contract weren’t immediately announced, except that the modest Australian would receive most of his compensation in the form of “annuities, life insurance, and a pension.” Rumors swirled that top players could get six-figure deals–enormous sums for a few months of exhibition tennis. Only eight men earned $100,000 for the entire 1973 campaign, and Năstase played 32 weeks–not counting Davis Cup!–for his table-topping $228,750.

Much of the sport’s old guard hoped that Team Tennis would simply go away. Five months away from the first serve of the proposed 1974 season, Rosewall’s signing was a reminder that yet another battle for talent, status, and fan attention laid in wait.

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December 8, 1973: Reason For Complaint

“Bickering,” wrote Bud Collins, “is the rule of the road in tennis these days.” Players griped at officials, unions battled federations, crowds heckled players, players gestured back, and referees fined the players. Somebody was usually threatening to sue.

This, however, was a new one: Officials fighting amongst themselves. Just before the championship match of the season-ending 1973 Grand Prix Masters between Ilie Năstase and Tom Okker on December 8th, the New England Umpires and Linesmen Association went on strike. They were peeved because the tournament director chose Mike Blanchard–a non-member, though a widely respected one–as the chair umpire instead of Association head Jim Sullivan.

At the eleventh hour, without linesmen, desperate measures were required. “I showed up to watch the tennis, and somebody grabs me,” said former college football star Charlie Ratto. “I wind up in the match, on a sideline.”

True story.

Surrounded by last-minute subs, Năstase and Okker played like replacements themselves. The Dutchman, in particular, was abysmal. He was broken in five of his first six service games, giving his opponent a 6-3, 3-0 head start. The day before, he had advanced when John Newcombe hurt his knee and retired one point away from victory. Okker said he might have saved that match point–but not like this, he wouldn’t have. Nastase wasn’t much better, but he took full advantage. He kept his head throughout the afternoon, save for one ball he fired at the service-line judge when he disagreed with a decision–an automatic $100 fine.

Okker almost found his way back into the match. Serving at 5-6 in the second set, he lost a point on a Năstase volley that the Dutchman was certain he had double-hit. Blanchard was unmoved as Okker pleaded his case. The Romanian secured the break and took a two-sets-to-love advantage.

While the match ultimately took four sets, the result was never again in doubt. Back in October, Năstase had squandered a 5-2, 40-0 lead in Madrid. But on that day, Okker played his best tennis and the Romanian succumbed to distraction. Neither was the case in Boston, and Năstase completed a 6-3, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 victory.

For all its twists and turns, the Grand Prix Masters was a fitting end to a remarkable season from the erratic 27-year-old. Năstase won more than half of the tournaments he entered and led the Grand Prix points standings by a healthy margin. He piled up prize winnings of $228,750 and won two of his last three meetings with Okker, the one man who had consistently beaten him. Earlier in the week, he had complained that “nobody” considered him to be number one, that they wanted to pick an American or an Australian. Still, the majority of journalists who printed their own subjective rankings put Năstase on top, as well.

After the match, it was back to bickering. Okker admitted he was “PO’d … at the whole situation.” Năstase, $15,000 richer than he was a few hours before, was incapable of leaving good enough alone. “No,” he told the press, “I will not pay any fine.”

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December 7, 1973: Match Point Down

Superstar players competing in December might have wondered if the tennis season was too long. Or maybe the year-end Masters tournament was simply cursed. Whatever the reason, one of the Masters semi-finals ended when a player retired, one point away from victory–two years in a row.

In 1972, the unlucky one was Tom Gorman, who smacked a backhand winner past Stan Smith then, holding match point, told the umpire he couldn’t continue because of a back problem. Neither Gorman nor Smith got through the round-robin stage of the 1973 event, but reporters could dust off their old drafts nonetheless. This time, John Newcombe fell prey to the injury bug, and Tom Okker was the unlikely beneficiary.

Okker was the only undefeated man left in the field, having dispatched Smith, Jimmy Connors, and Manuel Orantes in straight sets. In the semi-final on December 7th, Okker finally dropped a frame to Newcombe, 6-3, but he rebounded to take the second, 7-5. Newk managed to ignore the tightness in his right knee to take a one-break lead in the third, and at deuce in the ninth game, he put away an overhead to earn match point.

And then he felt something pop. Like Gorman a year earlier, Newcombe made his decision quickly. “I might have tried to give it one last shot, to serve an ace on match point,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have been able to play the final, so what was the use?”

Ironically, the situation had once been reversed. At the 1969 Hollywood Pro, Okker hurt his ankle two points away from victory against the Aussie. He softballed two serves, Newcombe netted them both, and Okker advanced. The Dutchman earned a bit more prize money, but he couldn’t recover in time for the next round and defaulted.

Okker held the opinion that he might have beaten Newk this time, too. After all, there was still one point left to play, and Okker had saved the first match point with a strong backhand return. He had already won 91 matches in 1973, and he wasn’t about to concede the possibility of a 92nd.

Whatever would have happened had Newcombe’s knee held out, the Flying Dutchman was into the final, where Ilie Năstase was waiting. Năstase had overcome an early stumble against Gorman to defeat Newcombe and Jan Kodeš in the round robin, then kept his concentration long enough to straight-set Connors in the semi-final.

Năstase had clinched the top spot of the Grand Prix points leaderboard, but as Bud Collins wrote, much was still at stake: a “$15,000 first prize and serious consideration for status as No. 1 in the universe.” The two men had faced off six times since May, with Okker winning four, including their two meetings on indoor carpet. Neither man had taken a direct route to the final, but–cursed or not–the Grand Prix Masters ended up with a championship match worthy of its position as the season-ending showdown on the tennis calendar.

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December 4, 1973: Interest Revived

*Tom Gorman at the 1973 Davis Cup Finals*

Pity poor Tom Gorman. Two days after a five-set loss to Rod Laver in the 1973 Davis Cup finals, the 27-year-old American was blown off the court by John Newcombe in a dead rubber. Two days after that, he opened play at the Grand Prix Masters in Boston, the distant eighth seed in an eight-man field.

Gorman had barely made the cut, securing his place in the draw with a title run in Stockholm a month earlier. As if to underscore his long-shot status, his first assignment in Boston was a round-robin match against Grand Prix leader and defending champion Ilie Năstase, who had beaten him in 16 of 17 previous meetings. In their latest encounter, when Gorman unexpectedly reached the semi-finals of the French Open, Năstase allowed him just eight games in three sets.

One could forgive the Seattle native for admitting that he had “no interest in this even at all.”

Yet on the morning of December 4th, Gorman woke up eager, realizing he had nothing to lose. Pity poor Năstase. Or don’t: It was a typical “mercurial” performance from the Romanian, who unexpectedly found himself battling an opponent in peak form, then came up with an excuse for his lack of a response.

Gorman saved break point for 3-all in the first set, when Năstase claimed that someone in the crowd called him a “bum.” The American didn’t hear anything, but he took advantage of his distracted foe, reeling off ten straight points and grabbing the first set. Năstase, who hurled far worse slurs at officials on a regular basis, later claimed that he “couldn’t play” after being mildly heckled. However flimsy the explanation, it holds up: His serve fell apart in the second set and he stumbled to a 6-4, 6-1 loss.

That, for the American, was the good news. The bad news was that his next assignment was a second match in four days against Newcombe. Newk had arrived in Boston as engaged as Gorman had been detached. While Năstase fumbled, the mustachioed Australian dominated Jan Kodeš, winning 11 of the last 13 games for his own 6-4, 6-1 victory. Newcombe at his best was perhaps the most fearsome force in tennis. Gorman’s path to an unlikely triumph in Boston wasn’t about to get any easier.

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December 1, 1973: Sweep

After twelve months of play around the world, the 1973 Davis Cup came to an end in 66 minutes.

The Australians entered the second day of the final tie, on December 1st, with a two-nothing lead over the United States. American hopes fell to the doubles team of Stan Smith and Erik van Dillen, the country’s best player and its most skillful doubles specialist. Van Dillen was known to be erratic, but at crucial moments–including the 1972 Cup final in Bucharest–he had outshone the much bigger names with whom he shared the court.

The Americans expected to face a pairing of John Newcombe and Ken Rosewall. Instead, the Aussies threw a curveball, sending out Newcombe with Rod Laver, despite the fact that Laver was 35 years old and both men had played more than three hours the previous day. Captain Neale Fraser had been considering using the duo for more than a month; he had suggested the two men team up for the Australian Indoors in November. They did, and they won the title. Newcombe had partnered Tony Roche to ten grand slam titles, and he liked sharing the court with a left-hander.

Rosewall was disappointed to be left out: His professional status had kept him from competing in Davis Cup matches since 1956, and at 39 years old, he knew this might be his last chance. Fraser didn’t take the decision lightly, and by the end of the day, no one was going to second-guess him.

Newcombe served well, and Laver served better. The Americans didn’t earn a single break point, stumbling their way to a 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 defeat. It was the worst doubles loss for the United States in the history of Davis Cup play, and it secured the trophy for the visitors.

“I think it’s the best I’ve played in doubles,” said the usually modest Laver. American captain Dennis Ralston said he’d only seen the Rocket play so well once before–and that was several years earlier in a singles match.

Smith had few answers, and van Dillen had even fewer. Sports Illustrated called the specialist’s play “out-and-out lousy.” Van Dillen didn’t argue, but he didn’t think a better performance would’ve changed the outcome. “I think if I had had eight arms we might not have won,” he said. “You get out there and find it’s tough that your best shots are coming back at you better than they left.”

Aussies exploded in excitement and relief, both in Cleveland and back home. They had waited six years to reclaim the most prestigious trophy in tennis. Laver had sat out the competition for more than a decade. While Davis Cup was no longer the be-all and end-all of the sport–as evidenced by the half-full stadium and non-traditional indoor venue–it had always been particularly treasured Down Under.

Stan Smith was a traditionalist, too, an American who would put his national team ahead of personal interests even when younger countrymen did not. As soon as Laver won his final service game to put the match on ice, Smith headed for the net to congratulate his opponents. “Well,” he told them, “it looks like we go Australia next year.”

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November 30, 1973: Pure Talent

*John Newcombe (left) with Australian Davis Cup captain Neale Fraser*

The home fans seemed to know what was coming. The 1973 Davis Cup final, pitting the United States against Australia, was hosted in Cleveland, Ohio, the site of several recent international competitions, many of them attended by full houses of enthusiastic supporters.

On day one of the tie, which featured four of the best players on the planet, Cleveland’s Public Hall was half-empty. Certainly the Cup meant less to Americans than it did back in Australia: The US squad had held the trophy since 1968, while the Aussies hadn’t fallen short for so many consecutive years since before World War II. The matches were broadcast by satellite Down Under, and untold thousands of fans dragged themselves out of bed at five o’clock in the morning to see the first ball struck.

Stan Smith, the star of the US side, didn’t complain about the lackluster crowd. The previous year, his team had overcome hostile crowds, biased officials, and soggy clay in Bucharest. “The only condition against us here,” he said in Cleveland, “is pure talent.”

On November 30th, Smith kicked off the tie against US Open champion John Newcombe, proving that there was plenty of talent on both benches. The opening rubber could hardly have been any closer. Newcombe built a two-sets-to-one lead and led by a break in the fourth, when Smith chanced into a mis-hit return lob winner that brought him back even. The fifth set was a roller-coaster, with the returner taking a lead in eight of ten games, five of which went to deuce. Two overrules forced crucial points to be replayed, and Newcombe won both. Those near-misses, combined with a net-cord winner that gave the Australian match point, were the extent of the difference. In three hours and one minute, Newk pulled out the decision, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.

The second match pitted Rod Laver against 27-year-old Tom Gorman. Gorman had sat out the semi-final against Romania, yielding his place to the veteran Marty Riessen. American captain Dennis Ralston felt that Gorman had the higher peak level of the two. (Ralston had also declined to call upon Arthur Ashe or Cliff Richey, two contract professionals who were technically ineligible for Davis Cup competition, but whom Australia had said they would allow to play.)

Gorman did indeed produce some of his best tennis, outplaying Laver for three sets before Rocket–probably the best come-from-behind player in the history of the game–discovered his own. Gorman took a hard-fought first set, 10-8, conceded the second, 6-8, and regained the lead in the third, 8-6. Only then did Laver fully let loose. By the fifth set, the 35-year-old was in control, breaking at love to open the frame and breaking again in the third game on the way to a 6-1 deciding set.

In seventy-plus years of Davis Cup play, only one team had ever come back from a two-love deficit in the final round, and that was Australia, who had overcome Bobby Riggs and the United States in 1939. Newcombe was in top form–Smith said he had never seen his opponent play better–Laver was revitalized, and no less of an alternate than Ken Rosewall was ready on the bench. The crowd in Cleveland was subdued, and it was easy to see why.

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